Engineering Biology
Health & Medicine Challenge:

Eradicate existing and emerging infectious diseases.

Develop better population-scale surveillance methods for emerging infectious diseases and create technologies to rapidly address outbreaks and epidemics in real time.

Engineering Biology Objectives & Technical Achievements

Advance engineering of biological tools to detect and track pathogen reservoirs and flow over time and space.

Engineering DNA Biomolecular Engineering Host Engineering Data Science

DNA-based event recording (DNA barcoding).

Development of simple and cheap, biomolecule-based kits for surveillance and analysis.

Next-generation live cell reporting systems.

Advanced models for pathogen flow through the environment and populations in real time.

Develop tools to rapidly characterize and respond to known and unknown pathogens in real time at population scales.

Engineering DNA Biomolecular Engineering Host Engineering Data Science

Diagnostics for nucleic acids indicative of the presence of specific pathogens, utilizing targeted DNA- and RNA-binding Cas editors.

Development of strain-specific vaccines in real time (i.e., during an outbreak).

Engineer microbes that detect pathogenic antigens and react by secreting anti-pathogen factors.

Advanced bioinformatics to quickly characterize emerging pathogens from genetic sequences and epigenetic markers.
Last updated: June 19, 2019 Back